Engineer-To-Order Product Development

Abstract

Industrial manufacturers' complex product-development activities have seen various advancement and improvement approaches over the past decades. In order to enable the implementation of efficient and effective product-development support processes in the quest of achieving shorter product development lead-times and higher return on investments (ROIs). Engineer-To-Order (ETO) product capacity projects, including large electric machine, huge centrifugal pumps, Diesel/Natural fuel power plant engines, steam turbine, boiler, ship, etc., have challenges concerning their long product-development lead-times. The challenges confronting these enterprises industrial Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are enormous with one of the major ones being the effective and efficient network or flow of technical communication among the main stakeholders for complex / new product-development. Moreover, with all the industrial manufacturing complex product-development process improvements, in terms of complex engineering design and delivery, there are still a lot more variances to be addressed on the ‘better, faster and cheaper' paradigm. Furthermore, attention is needed on efficient information exchange systems as well as effective operational communication in their complex product-development processes for a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, this paper presents a proposed optimum conceptual information technology systems' architecture towards enhancing an industrial sustainable competitive advantage: By employing social network theory (SNT) analysis to advise on a strategic and effective communication network for industrial supply-chain (SC) sustainable competitive advantage.